


I Have a Need

by unrealityfreak



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Asphyxiation, Bloodplay, F/F, F/M, M/M, Murder, Mutilation, Sibling Incest, Torture, Tricksters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-03
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-11-17 15:56:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unrealityfreak/pseuds/unrealityfreak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The tricksters have been playing with their alternate selves for a long time, and it's just starting to get a little stale when something happens that changes the game completely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. This dark fever is unstoppable...

**Author's Note:**

> I apologise for:
> 
> 1) posting this like ten times  
> 2) writing this instead of updating fics that need to be updated  
> 3) not being able to write dark shit properly.

Dave is such a good little pet. Never makes a fuss. He's always sitting at his computer chair with not a stitch of clothing on, just as he'd been told. He's always hard and ready within five minutes of the door closing slowly, firmly, behind John. Never questions the way John only comes over after hours, after he's said he was going to get some sleep. He thinks it's a code. He thinks, in that pretty little empty head of his, that John wants to throw Dave's Bro off their trail, to keep him from suspecting the things they get up to in the dark while he's at work. Truth is, it's just more convenient for him to come at night, and his clueless counterpart seals his cover story so perfectly he doesn't even bother making the distinction when Dave moans out _"John"_ and means the human. It's actually kind of hilarious.

He's getting bored, though. Aside from being fun to play with and incredibly easy to trick, Dave is _boring._ All he ever wants to do is screw and cuddle. Not that he doesn't follow every command he's given like the lovesick simpleton he is. But maybe John is looking for more than just a toy with perfect obedience. Maybe he's looking for a little fight to his food. Maybe...

Maybe.

Tonight, Dave is waiting just like always. He's started early though, and John drinks up the immediate guilt in his expression when he realises he's been caught. He decides to throw the poor boy a bone.

"You've been getting antsy lately, haven't you?"

Dave nods, afraid to speak. His fear is evident even behind the shades he so loves.

"It's because you love me, isn't it?" he purrs, voice forgiving.

Dave squeezes himself and hisses out a _"yes,"_ needy and adorably sincere, trying his best not to move before he's been given permission. John doesn't plan on giving him permission. Instead, he pulls his shirt off over his head and crosses the room in a few lazy steps, climbs on the chair and straddles Dave's bare thighs, pushing them together in a way he hopes is uncomfortable. Braces his hands on the back of the chair. Smiles down at Dave.

"Prove it."

He has to stifle a giggle at the desperate way Dave opens his pants for him and frees him just enough to get that smart mouth around his cock. Dave is allowed to use his hands however he pleases as long as he doesn't gag on the thrusts. Tonight he's bold, and John has to hiss at him in displeasure when he tries to finger his ass. "Not the way it works," he warns, and Dave hardly hesitates at all before withdrawing his fingers. He's kind of ruined the blow job already, though, and John pulls out of his mouth with a sigh, stepping back to the floor in front of the chair and spinning it around so the back of it leans against the desk. "Knees," he says, low and calm, and Dave hops to attention with little pants of arousal and saliva rolling down his chin and maybe he'll be entertaining tonight after all, if he keeps looking over his shoulder like that. Eager. Almost defiant. John likes it the way he supposes normal people like food. Pleasant, but nothing to crow about.

Dave's trained enough not to need much prep. He makes all the appropriate noises while he's getting fingered quick and rough, his own saliva on John's hand and inside him and making a mess on the desk and chair. John tsks at him and makes him lick up all the stray drops. Dave's little closet dom. Dorky nerd by day and sexy hardass by night. As if the human had it in him. Dave's a moron for letting the face fool him. _Honestly._ John slams into him without any semblance of care and grips his pale waist for leverage, blunt nails digging in and, if he's lucky, drawing blood. Dave moans, John babbles false praise at him, etcetera.

But then something _interesting_ happens, and John feels his pulse pick up in a way that leaves him breathless, far more excited than Dave and his pining and his willing body could ever make him. For all that Dave is a moron, he must have seen the signs subconsciously. Surely, he must have known that something was innately, horribly _different_ about the person who fucked him every night to the person he had such a wet, eager boner for. He shakily removes his shades, and his voice does a funny little crack on the word "What—" and then John's laughing, it's too much, he can't believe his luck. Just when things were getting stale, the universe gives him this gift.

The blue text on Dave's screen erases every doubt he's ever planted in that empty, pretty head, and it's worth the undoing of all his hard work when Dave tears his gaze from the screen to look over his shoulder at the right face, the right body, the _wrong eyes._ He couldn't control the leak even if he wanted to, now. Not when Dave's look of horror nearly gets knocked off his face by John's next hard thrust into his ass, and suddenly the cries have turned the corner from pleasure/pain into _"No, no, no, fuck, what—!"_

And now John is laughing as loud and free as he never lets himself laugh in front of this Dave, this "real" version, this fake. He doesn't let Dave's thrashing and yelling deter him from continuing to fuck him, doesn't bat an eyelash when Dave almost gets away in the middle of the transition to the bed. He just really wants to see Dave's face for this next part, is that so bad? It's almost romantic, too, when he shoves the wild blonde onto his back on the mattress and spits into his hand to slick himself back in. He doesn't let Dave's resistance ruin the moment. Little punk isn't half as strong as John anyway. Probably not as strong as the other John, the one who thinks he's being sneaky about his late-night computer use, the one who's wondering why Dave hasn't responded yet. They can both hear the chiming of the chat client, and Dave is screaming John's name, _his_ John's name, as if the mic will magically turn on and make his efforts anything but useless.

It shocks him into brief stillness when John's hands wrap around his throat, and in the beat of silence that follows the action his fear, his panic, the awful realisation of what, _exactly,_ is about to happen are all written on his face in bold print for John to giggle at. He doesn't ease into it. He squeezes the windpipe shut even more firmly than he'd just been squeezing at lean sides and revels in the strain of muscles that were never meant to work in the way Dave's trying to use them. The hands that scrabble at his are equally as ineffective, and through glee-narrowed eyes he watches the expressions flicker on Dave's face in time with John's shallow humps into him, ignores his attempts to fight his way free until the attempts start to flag, not because Dave is giving up but because _he's losing strength._ It's so much more wonderful than the little show they normally put on, even if he kind of wishes he could hear Dave scream while he died instead of fading out in silence.

Not till the pulse under his hands has nearly stopped does he realise that Dave's still a little bit hard, and he must've maintained his usual raging stiffie until his heart couldn't feed it anymore. He totally didn't mind as much as he pretended, or maybe he _liked_ that he minded, and it's a waste, a potential new use for an old toy, but it's too late to take back the very last flutters of life in Dave's body and the way the absolute stillness following his final heartbeat make John's dick pulse, the way he looks and feels like a doll under John's body and hands and suddenly he's so fucking close, just a few more...

He comes into a corpse and something about that makes him wish he could come again immediately. He laughs at the pinging behind him and the glassy stare beneath him and he finally releases Dave's throat and flops down on the bed beside him. "Oh, Dave. You finally impressed me," he says between giggles. "All you had to do was _stop trying so damn hard._ " And he's so witty, he's so tickled by his own sense of humour that he laughs himself sore before he even thinks about the next step.

Wiping away tears of mirth, he checks the time. Might as well not even bother with disposal; the body won't have time to stink the place up before the owner of the place comes home and finds his precious charge all used up and discarded like the trash he pretended not to be. John number one might be a bit of fun, though. He runs an absent hand down the length of Dave's cool leg as he slides off the bed and swivels the chair around to sit in it. Blue text takes up the whole window, teasing and insulting and, near the end, worried. After all, it takes a while to suffocate to death.

John taps at the keyboard briefly, grins smugly to himself, then hops up and does a little dance back to the bed. He's feeling so refreshed that he deigns to give Dave one last goodbye kiss, enjoying himself even though his desperate little puppy is uncharacteristically unresponsive. Biting through the bottom lip hard enough to release a slow trickle of unpressurised blood satisfies him enough.

Before he leaves, he takes a final look around the room and remembers all the fun he's had in it, filled with a sense of appreciation for his lost plaything. "You did good, Davey," he says to the paling body on the bed. "I always did like you best." And his laughter follows him through the apartment, echoing off the walls long after he's left the front door wide open in his wake.

On the screen, which lights the room with only enough glow to make out white flesh against whiter sheets, a single line of red text among a sea of blue stands stark and proud, and a boy with breath enough to scream reads it from the other end of a connection that no longer connects anything at all.


	2. This burning chill is unstoppable...

"God, Jade, it felt so great, all the thrashing around he did and then _the stillness,_ he was so _heavy,_ oh god I wish I could bring him back to do it over and over again." He's twirling around his sister, nuzzling her, gushing about his night, but when he finally looks up at her face he falls silent.

"Do you have," she hisses, eyes dark, " _any_ idea what you've just done?" Behind her, Dave is playing with Rose's hair, and he peeks sideways at them with a little smirk on his face, like _ha ha, you got in trouble._ Suddenly grumpy, John flips him off.

"For starters, you just lost yourself a toy. Good luck getting another one, because I'm sure as hell not sharing mine, and Dave's has your face." Dave snickers, and John pulls his hammer out of his sylladex to twirl casually between his fingers. Dave is silenced by this, but Rose starts up with her weird tittering, hiccuping like mad, and Jade turns to see what they're up to.

"John fucked uuuup," Rose sings at their leader, swaying in place and causing Dave to huff at her as her braids come apart.

"Yes, he did," Jade tells her. "And he's going to tie up all his loose ends before I punish him, _isn't he?_ " The simmering look she gives him has him swallowing back nervous giggles, tucking his hammer back into its slot, nodding firmly.

"Yes, sis."

"Dave." The blonde in question perks up, and Rose slumps over onto his lap. "You're going with him. He's too strong for just one of you, and he'll be less suspicious if you're there." When both boys nod and neither move to leave, Jade yells " _Go!_ " pointing toward the mirror and stomping one foot. They scramble to obey, Rose getting thrust carelessly from her brother's lap. Pouting, she slinks over to hang off Jade's shoulder, kissing at her neck as the glass seals shut behind the boys.

"John better not have ruined everything," Jade murmurs into Rose's hair. Big lavender eyes blink up at her, and her face relaxes into a sharp smile. "Come play with me while they're gone, love."

***

When Bro gets home, Dave and John are on the futon messing with the Xbox. Totally normal scene. Yet he's on his guard; John can smell it. He nudges Dave with an elbow, and the blonde takes his cue to get off the futon and, expression carefully blank, nod at Bro.

"Sup. How was your night?"

Bro glances between the boys, and John's skin crawls with warning. "Ain't you supposed to be at school?"

Dave shrugs. "Skipped."

Bro makes a disinterested noise and heads for the kitchen. While his back is turned, John makes gestures at Dave until he rolls his eyes and mimes back _"I'm going!"_ Slowly, he saunters up to Bro and gets in his space. The alert level in the room is so high John has to keep himself from laughing at the anticipation, but Dave manages to get his arms around the human in a pseudo-hug.

"Love you, Bro," he mutters. It's so weird that it should make the suspicion worse, but somehow the big man relaxes, just the tiniest bit. As soon as he has his arm around Dave's shoulders, John is on his feet, in the kitchen, hammer mid-arc toward the top of his douchey baseball cap. The blow never lands, but that's okay, because Dave has Bro off balance, and John can't help the noise of triumphant mirth that bubbles up out of him at the sound of both bodies hitting the floor. Before he can make a move toward them, Bro's got his sword out and aimed at John, not Dave, _John,_ like he doesn't take his own little brother seriously. But he has to know by now that that's not actually _his_ Dave.

Engaging with him, blocking all his slashes and waiting for an opening, he realises that Bro isn't exactly ignoring Dave, but he's purposely reigning in his strength, doing only enough damage to push the boy away. Never actually hurting him. It makes him howl with laughter, and he yells to Dave, "You're golden, bro! He can't do shit to you!"

As if in defiance of John's claim, Bro is a sudden blur, easily trackable but too fast to block as he lands a slice across John's thigh, opening him up to the bone. He hisses in mirth as much as pain and goes down on one knee, still grinning. By the time Bro can go in for another attack Dave's behind him, wrapped around him, the sword discarded halfway across the apartment and sizzling with acidic blood.

Dave always carries rope. He likes being tied up. John is pretty grateful that the bondage nut is his partner in this, because they probably wouldn't have been able to play, otherwise. Dave manages to drag him to the computer chair and lash him to it, and when John's healed enough to limp into the bedroom he sees the look on Bro's face, his head turned to look at the tangle of blankets in the corner and even though there's no blood it's written all over his face that he knows _exactly_ what that's all about.

Once he's got all the knots secure, Dave starts idly spinning the chair around. "We get to play with him, right?" he asks John, not looking away from his rotating prey.

"Of course we do. That's the whole point."

"No..." he looks kind of sheepish, finally glancing at John through his eyelashes. "Jade said to kill him."

John puts his weight on his injured leg, fingers the scab. "Right. That too. Obviously."

Dave giggles. "You're just excited."

"No shit! He's harder to control than Dave was—" finally, a flinch from the human, and he looks a cross between angry and devastated, and John wants to _squeeze_ all of it out of him "—it'll be so much more fun."

"Why do you like it when they fight?" Dave's stopped the motion of the chair and has his hands on Bro's shoulders, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt, trying to stare through the shades. "It's so much easier when they want it."

John barks out a laugh and moves around behind Dave so that Bro can see his face and his wrong eyes when he says, "Dave did both. He fought the whole time but he _wanted it._ I probably could have kept him alive and done it again. And again. And again."

Bro doesn't respond. Dave's hands go still and he looks over his shoulder at John, eyes wide. "Could I...? Even though he knows?"

And John's laughing so hard at the way Bro starts to squirm, the way Dave's already licking and biting his lips, he can hardly answer. He pats Dave's ass in approval and the knife is out immediately, hacking at the shirt under the ropes almost carelessly, and this Dave is just as overeager as the human one, sprung in a second at the sight of blood and grabby little hands all over. Dave's a talker, too. He's muttering things in Bro's ear when his mouth isn't elsewhere, and John can hear all of it, can hear the things intended to crawl inside Bro's head and sit there, because Dave's capable of getting inside people when he wants to. Can hear the things that he's babbling to himself, running commentary on what he wants, what he feels, how everything tastes; can hear his moans to John, _I love you, I love him, I've never had him before I can see his feelings for Dave oh can I be the real Dave now please fuck please,_ and John's nearly breathless at the sight of his partner riding the human's cock, blood everywhere, the damn kid uses blood as _lube,_ he can hardly focus enough to say, "Yes, Dave, yes, anything you want, pet, you are the real Dave, the only Dave," and then Dave's crying out, laughing at the ceiling, panting as his come lands on a straining, heaving chest.

John savours the broken look in Bro's eyes when Dave takes his shades off, knocks the hat to the floor and buries his fingers in hair so similar to his own, kisses the man without blinking, and his eyes are _wrong_ and Bro can't look away from them and John's getting antsy.

"Finish it."

Dave doesn't break the kiss, hardly looks away from the human. "But I like him."

John may not be the leader, but he won't be ignored. He dislodges Dave's hands to replace them with one of his own, yanks the human's head back, throat exposed and inviting in Dave's direction. "Use your knife. It'll be bloody as hell. They _don't stop bleeding,_ Dave, not till it's all run out."

Dave's mouth falls open again at the thought of so much blood but he just wiggles on his toy's lap, knife unmoving in his hand.

"Dave..."

"But—"

And John's hammer comes back out, claw-first into the exposed throat at full force and he can feel things breaking, tearing, being crushed under his hand, _pulls_ and sends an arc of blood across them both, sends it spattering onto the walls and the screen of the computer. Dave whines and giggles and moans all at once and he's got his hands in the stream running down the lifeless chest, his mouth trailing kisses around the wound once John puts his hammer away.

"There's enough blood here for us to fuck _all night,_ " he says, and Dave is off the body in an instant, tongue in John's mouth, struggling to get two pairs of pants off at once. John laughs at his impatience, shoving him face-first into the wet carpet, and he pounds into him with red hips until Jade comes in to see what's taking them so long.

Rose is right behind Jade, squealing with laughter at the sight of the mess they've made, pulling her brother out from under John and kissing his bloody face until it's just the two of them rolling around together while John stands beside his sister and cleans his glasses on her skirt.

"You did good, I guess," she says, making a face at the walls. "We have an even shorter deadline, now. The neighbours will smell this within days."

"We'll take care of it," he says, but he doesn't need to see the look on her face to know she doesn't believe him. She lets him kiss her, though. That's all he cares about for now.


	3. This blackest wish has taken hold...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, by this point this entire fic has been thoroughly jossed. It's a same-city AU anyway, though, so I'm just gonna go ahead and finish it up and then continue to enjoy the canon tricksters.

Jade is in a _mood._ She's been pacing for the last two minutes, yelling at John about how he's fucked everything up, her human is starting to catch on to the fact that the other Dave is dead, and it's not like their Dave can get online and fill in because he'd be absolute shit at it (Dave is in a corner picking at the cut in John's bloody, discarded jeans; he doesn't react to the insult) and why the hell did she get stuck with such idiots for partners anyway, and John tries to interject that he's _sorry,_ but then she whirls and punches him in the face hard enough to break his nose. The sound of the cartilage cracking is so loud in the silence that he has to giggle, the sound muffled through his injury. Jade huffs and turns away from him, and Rose slinks up behind him to hug his chest.

"Shh, don't worry, it's healing already, see?" He pulls her around by one arm so she can see his nose, crooked and flanked by flowering bruises, and she smiles a little, stands up on tiptoe to kiss the bridge, making him hiss out a breath in pleasurepain. He kisses her back gratefully and thoroughly.

By the time his nose is healed, Dave has made his way under Jade's skirt and licked the agitation right out of her, so her voice is less accusing when she says, "Alright, assholes. We have another job to do. Tongues to yourselves for five minutes. Rose, is your human expecting you tonight?" Rose shakes her head, and Jade nods. "Good. You're coming with me."

John makes a noise that is certainly not a whine. "But then I'll be alone!"

Jade looks as if she might boil over again, but Dave nudges her thigh with his chin. "He can help you girls, right?" he asks, glancing between the brunettes.

Jade sighs. "Sure. As long as he doesn't fuck anything else up. And you—" she grabs a fistful of Dave's hair and wrenches his head back, making him gasp and push his hips up, "—better fuck your little pansy good and hard, so he doesn't even _think_ about anything but your dick until we're ready to kill him too."

Dave whimpers. "But..."

She releases him. "But?"

"But I _like_ him. I don't want to kill him. Why can't I keep him?"

John rolls his eyes. "If you let him live, he'll hate you, and you won't be able to play the way you like anymore. You get all sappy with him, right?"

Dave looks reluctant, but he nods. Jade runs her fingers through her hair and whispers, "It's okay. You'll still have us."

Dave's eyes go wide. "They _bleed,_ though. Until it's all gone. They just keep bleeding."

"And don't you want to see all that blood? To play with it? Taste it?"

Dave's whimper morphs into a giggle, and Jade looks so much like a snake with her jewel eyes narrowed in satisfaction that John almost echoes him. Rose moves against him and he realises he's squeezing her waist, bends down to kiss her briefly, biting at her lips the way she likes.

"Will I have to kill mine, too?" she asks, quietly, once John has released her.

Jade breathes out a laugh, but doesn't answer.

***

The next night, Rose and John are sent to deal with the larger human in the darker corners of the house while Jade occupies her prey. The fight is short and sweet; Mom Lalonde always did like the human version of John, and of course she loves her precious little girl to death.

Jade has her toy restrained with her own knitting, and gagged by the same. John admires her all trussed up, and then his Rose takes a hesitant step forward and he's got two of the same beautiful girl in his line of sight, one warm like melted candy and one with sharp ice eyes that saw through the ruse seconds too late to save herself, eyes that for all their sharpness are still so much duller than his Rose's bright ones, cinder-hot and leaking madness now that there's no one to save her counterpart. Jade gestures for Rose to take the floor, and with an excited giggle the blonde closes the distance between them, running her fingernails over pale skin, and John thinks she might not even bother with a weapon, might just cut her up with her own bare hands the way she sometimes does to him and Dave.

It's not long before she proves him right, and he watches, rapt, as sharp nails coax out ever stronger rivulets of blood, blood that doesn't dry up or sizzle or clot. The human is trying _so very hard_ not to make noise, but she does anyway. As nice as it is to watch, he thinks he may just bite through his lip with impatience.

"Jade," he calls, resisting the urge to... he doesn't know what he'd do if he weren't keeping himself still.

Jade glances away from the scene to appraise him, seemingly impassive. "Rose."

Rose looks up from her task, licking her wide-grinning lips, eyes blazing. "Yes?"

"Get it over with already," John clarifies.

Rose's grin falters; her eyes focus properly on Jade. "Do I have to do it?"

Jade's expression is unchanged. She doesn't speak again. John realises that this is a test, and wonders if Rose will pass it. The fact that he has to wonder tells him all he needs to know.

Unsurprisingly, Rose slips off her twin's lap, backing up and standing a few feet away as Jade, exasperated, levels her gun between clouded eyes and shoots. The human didn't even struggle in the face of her own death. John allows himself to miss his own human, just a little bit.

They leave the body, for now. As they make their way back to the apartment, John catches sight of Jade's cold glare to the back of Rose's head, her mouth a disappointed slant.

In the morning, the meet up with Dave, and Jade tells them that they're moving to the house formerly occupied by the Lalonde humans. She makes Dave and Rose clean up the bodies, and pulls John aside.

"Rose's human is next. She's smart; she'll figure out something's wrong now that two of her friends are MIA. I want to take care of her tonight, before this gets any worse."

"It'll be fine, Jade," he says, pulling her to him. "Even if the other two figure anything out, it's not like they can kill us."

"No, but they're still a liability."

Instead of responding, he mouths at her neck, trying to get her to loosen up a bit. She does indeed get a little loose with him for a while, but when they're done she doesn't seem any happier.

***

Jade sweeps into the house seconds before Rose, who is fighting back sobs and goes immediately to John. He holds her and wipes at her wet face, and Dave sidles up to them to rub at his sister's back.

"What happened?" Dave asks.

It's Jade who responds, "She couldn't do it. Again. It was one thing when it was wearing her face, but her own _toy—!"_ Nobody goes to her to calm her down, so she stalks around the room, wandering more than pacing.

"Why didn't you do it?" John asks Rose, pulling away and tilting her chin up. "It's fun!"

"Not to me," she says, leaning back into Dave. "I just wanted to play, not break them."

"Nonsense." He smiles encouragingly at her, smiles over her shoulder at Dave, tries to catch Jade's gaze and smile at her as well, but she's not looking at him. "You should help with Dave's. The other me. It'll be great, we can do it together."

The blondes nod, but they don't look terribly excited at the prospect. When John glances back at Jade, she's looking at Rose again, and he sees the black intent stirring in her eyes.


	4. I'm sorry, it cannot be controlled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took entirely too long to finish this, but here's the last chapter. Thanks for waiting it out! <3

I'm sorry, it cannot be controlled.

The bigger human is taken care of first, to avoid complications. He goes down fairly easily, though Dave gets a little burnt by the shaving cream bomb. John fumbles with the car, but somehow manages to get it rolling, and gets out in time to watch it slip under the surface of the lake. When the little one comes home from school, Dave is waiting on his bed, and John and the girls listen from the mirror in the attached bathroom.

"Dave!" he calls when he sees the boy on his bed. "What are you doing here?"

"I came for you, of course."

John holds a hand over Rose's mouth to keep her from giggling aloud when the two kiss in greeting, Dave pulling his lover down onto the bed and tugging his hoodie off for him.

"I have no idea when my dad's going to come home," the human whispers, as if it's any other night and they have to sneak around. "I'm not sure if we can...."

"Of course we can," Dave whispers back, reassuring. "If he comes back, we'll just be quiet."

Placated, he allows Dave to tip them over, wraps his arms around the blond's shoulders and kisses him again.

Jade examines her nails as the bodies in the bedroom strip down, heat up, bite back cries. John is pretty bored himself, unimpressed with his human counterpart's idea of sex. They're so... _gentle._ Dave apparently likes treating his John like some delicate thing, though the human version of him was nowhere near that sentimental. Idly, he wonders what it would have been like if they hadn't interfered and the humans had gotten together. Probably really boring. Poor, dead Dave would be so twisted up over his goober crush that he'd pretend he was into this kind of slow touching.

As they progress and nobody's dick goes into anybody's ass, John snickers. Jade shoots him a warning glance; he leans into to murmur in her ear, "He doesn't even like anal, does he?"

Jade shrugs without looking at him. "His loss. He'll die without knowing what it's like."

Except Dave isn't killing him. Maybe he just wants to get off first? They continue to wait. Rose fondles the edge of his underwear with one hand and one of his nipples with the other, and he gets a hand up her skirt and two fingers inside her while Jade quietly huffs with impatience. Finally, _finally_ the sounds of orgasm come from the bedroom, making all three of them turn toward the mirror.

Nothing. Only the panting of post-coital cuddles and the muffled sound of more kissing.

"What the hell," Jade hisses, and steps through the glass onto the bathroom tile.

John follows, pulling Rose along behind him.

"What—Jade?! How did you—oh my god."

Dave pets his toy's naked side and whispers into his ear as dull blue eyes widen at the sight of his double. John grins his widest grin and waves hello.

"Dave what the hell is going on," the human says, looking at Rose, who is smiling shyly.

"He looks just like you," she whispers wonderingly in John's ear, clutching his arm.

Jade is looking at Dave pointedly, saying nothing. The toy is busy gaping at John and Rose (mostly John; it's not every day you meet your evil twin!) and doesn't notice when Dave pulls his knife into view, his knuckles white from clutching at it out of the human's sight. Jade nods. Dave swallows.

Nothing happens, _again._

"Do it or I will," Jade warns, and still nothing happens. Dave and Rose exchange looks just before the gunshot, and Dave jerks away from the human, from the _body,_ his eyes on the pool of blood forming under its head.

"There," Jade spits, getting in Dave's face, "now it's dead and nobody got to play with it. Are you _fucking happy?_ "

Dave whimpers, and John makes a face. He doesn't understand why this whole thing has been so dramatic. He doesn't understand why Dave looks so _sad,_ now, why he's clutching at the cooling body even as Jade spears him with her gaze. _So sentimental._

Rose has backed up into the bathroom again, chin tucked like a frightened animal, but before she can escape into the mirror Jade marches over and drags her back by the hair, shoves her face into the blood.

"This is what happens when you can't get shit done. I take care of it for you. I do _everything_ for you ungrateful little shits. I cleaned up _his_ mess—" she points the muzzle of the gun accusingly at John, and he doesn't let himself so much as blink under her wrath "—and I cleaned up all the ones after that, and now I'm going to clean this one, you spineless little worm."

Dave's shriek comes almost before the sound of Rose's neck snapping under Jade's fingers, and John's growing disgust with his lovers is stopped cold when he realises that she's dead. Jade _killed_ her. Jade's eyes are still aflame, and Dave scrambles into the corner, whimpering.

John gets it. He's sure Dave gets it too. Regardless, he climbs up onto the bed, crawls over the corpse of his double, and wraps himself around Dave.

"Shh, calm down, take a breath..." It almost pains him to see Dave like this, so broken and, yes, spineless, so incapable of handling what just happened. Rose is gone. He almost feels sorry for the loss. "Shhh."

Very slowly, Dave stops shivering. He's still naked; John strokes him all over and kisses his shoulders and nuzzles his face until he's calm again. Behind him, he can hear Jade hauling bodies around.

"John."

He turns to her, blinks slowly and wonders if his eyes are as bright as the well of bloodlust in his chest. They must be, because her expression looks more wicked than angry. She gestures to the knife Dave is still clinging to with both hands.

He struggles, of course. He begs. He always was a talker. John aches to hear more, to feel him _squirm_. Jade's hands come down around Dave's ankles and John straddles his hips, holds both wrists in one hand, kisses the pleas out of him, traces his own knife along his ribs and watches the blood hiss out of him in rivulets, presses into him and grits his teeth against the burn as the blood eats through his shirt. Dave is crying and John licks up every tear, admires the way he's gone pale, the second time he's seen that expression on this face, and when Dave closes his eyes he can almost pretend his has his human back. He wants to fuck him. He wants to draw it all out, wants to slice Dave open over and over and make him scream out loud instead of half-moaning at the pain, but Jade smacks him across the ass and he knows he has to end it.

The claw of the hammer cuts Dave's scream off at the source, and the room is silent.

Jade sighs. "That could have gone better."

This Dave, too, died with a hard-on. John giggles at that, trailing a finger through the blood. He smears a bit on Jade's cheek, and she cracks a smile. He can see how fake it is. He's not so stupid that he doesn't know what's next. _He's_ next.

_Unless he gets her first._


End file.
